Perfect Grave Page 6

  “You know what she told me, detective? She said that we face risks to deliver love, it’s what God has in the cards for us.”

  While serving together, the two nuns had confronted more horror than most people would face in a thousand lifetimes.

  Watching her now, Grace knew that nothing had prepared Sister Vivian for seeing her friend on that table, in that cold antiseptic room, with her throat slashed. Sister Vivian was struggling to reconcile her memories with the face she’d identified only moments ago.

  Under the hum of florescent lights, Grace, Perelli, and Sister Ruth Hurley, a resident in the town house where Sister Ann was murdered, watched patiently as Sister Vivian composed herself before replacing her glasses and returning to the documents.

  As she poised her fountain pen over the signature line, Grace noticed Sister Vivian’s hand quiver before the pen scratched across the paper, followed by the snap of a page, then another signature before the ME staffer gathered the papers into a white legal-sized folder.

  “Thank you, Sister,” said the staffer wearing a lab coat. “Please accept our condolences. We’ll contact you about releasing her to you through the funeral home. It should be later today.”

  “And her personal items?” Sister Ruth said. “Her clothes and her things?”

  “Yes,” Grace cleared her throat. “Those items have been collected by our forensic people. They’ll work on them and hold them as evidence.”

  “I see.”

  “I think we’re finished here, Sisters,” Grace said. “There’s another room, where we can talk, privately.”

  Grace guessed Sister Vivian at being close to six feet tall. Her neat white hair glowed against her dark skirt suit, a well-fitting simple design. She had the bearing of a ball-busting corporate CEO, Grace thought, catching the silver flash of the cross hanging from her neck when she sat at the large table in the empty conference room. Next to her, Sister Ruth, in her plain print jacket and black skirt, had the less imposing presence of a grade-school teacher quick to confiscate gum.

  “We understand you brought Sister Anne’s personal files from the town house and the Mother House in Chicago,” Grace said. “Do they list her family?”

  “No.” Sister Vivian snapped open her valise. “We were her family.” She slid two slim folders to Grace, who looked them over quickly, made a few notes in her case log, then passed them to Perelli.

  “Do you have any suspects, Detective?” Sister Ruth asked.

  “No,” Grace said, “we’ve got other detectives canvassing the shelter, her route traveled from there to the town house and the neighborhood. And we’re working on potential physical evidence.”

  The nuns nodded.

  “Is there anyone Sister Anne may have had contact with who may have wanted to harm her?” Grace asked.

  “I am not aware of anyone,” Sister Vivian said “Are you, Ruth?”

  “Everyone loved Anne.”

  “What about the people she helped at the shelter?” Grace asked. “We understand most of them have addictions, substance problems, many have criminal records. We’re checking those we know, but does anything stand out? Altercations, threats, anything?”

  “No, and this is what I cannot fathom,” Sister Vivian said. “These are people she helped. She shouldered the burden of their trouble, so why would anyone want to harm her?”

  “What about in the neighborhood?” Perelli said. “Anything out of the ordinary recently?”

  Sister Ruth shook her head.

  “She also helped women in abusive relationships,” Perelli said. “Maybe a vengeful spouse or ex-partner thought Sister Anne turned his woman against him?”

  “That’s possible,” Sister Ruth said. “We have encountered people with violent personalities or anger issues, but no one comes to mind.”

  “Sisters,” Grace made a note, “we’d like you to volunteer all of the order’s records on the people you’ve helped—names of abused women, ex-convicts, parolees, everyone you have on file for any reason. Staff lists, too. All of Sister Anne’s case files, if she had any. Everything.”

  “But that is all confidential,” Sister Ruth said.

  “We can get a warrant,” Grace said.

  “We’ll provide it to you,” Sister Vivian said.

  “But it’s privileged,” Sister Ruth said, “like the seal of the confession.”

  “Ruth, we’re not ordained priests—none of it constitutes a confession. Police can exercise a warrant. And,” Sister Vivian leveled her stare at Grace, “we can trust the detectives will honor the sensitivity of our files and the privacy of the people we are helping.”

  “Absolutely,” Grace said.

  “We’ll not impede the investigation,” Sister Vivian said to the other nun. “We’ll arrange to provide the information.”

  “Thank you,” Grace said. “Our crime-scene people will release Sister Anne’s room later today. But for your security, you must replace the faulty lock on the town house and consider relocating for a time.”

  “Detective, thank you, but the sisters will not be moving,” Sister Vivian said. “In fact, while I’m here, I’ll stay in Sister Anne’s room, once we clean it.”

  “But for your safety, until we make an arrest. Maybe the university,” Grace said.

  “That won’t be necessary. We’ve already forgiven the person who took our dear Sister’s life,” Sister Vivian said. “Like the Holy Mother, we’ll confront evil with love. We hold no hardness in our hearts for the person responsible. Nor do we hold any fear. We offer Mary’s mercy because we accept whatever God has planned for us.”

  “We understand,” Grace said. “Still, we’ll talk to the precinct commander about having a couple of patrol cars sit on the town house.”

  The nuns nodded as Grace, again, flipped through Sister Anne’s file from the order. It contained next to nothing in the way of personal information.

  “Can you tell us anything about her background? This mentions nothing about a father, mother, sister, brother, or what she did before she became a nun.”

  Sister Vivian twisted her cross.

  “She never wanted to talk about her life. As I recall, she was largely alone in this world until God called her to serve.”

  “This says something about Europe.”

  “Yes, the Order’s Mother House, or headquarters, was in Paris. Anne Braxton was a young woman living alone in Europe when she entered the Order. Since then our Mother House relocated to Washington, D.C., then to Chicago. Anne had served all over the world before her work brought her here to Seattle.”

  “Can we get anything more about her personal history? It’s like she just dropped out of the sky.”

  Sister Vivian nodded, promising to send out information requests to all the Order’s missions around the world where Sister Anne had worked. She said that she believed that the nun who’d advised Anne when she was first accepted as a postulant may still be living.

  “We’re trying to locate her as well. But Detective Garner, isn’t it more important to determine what happened here in the hours leading to her death than anything in her life from decades ago? Isn’t that how you handle these things?”

  Grace looked into the eyes of both nuns.

  “Well, until we know the facts, everything is critical. And everyone’s a suspect. That’s how we handle these things, Sister.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Come on, come on, show us something.

  Sister Anne’s bloodstained Seattle Seahawks sweatshirt, jeans, bra, underwear, socks, and shoes were tacked to a large bulletin board in the Seattle Police Crime Scene Investigation Unit.

  The clothes she had died in.

  Her silver ring, cross, and rosary were up there, too.

  And in one isolated corner: the knife used to kill her.

  So far, the case refused to yield a break that would lead to a suspect.

  But it would come.

  It had to come, Kay Cataldo, a senior forensic scientist with the unit, a
ssured herself, as she examined the board. She mentally crossed her fingers, willing her phone to ring with the call she was expecting.

  Cataldo knew her stuff. She was an expert latent fingerprint examiner. She also had two degrees in forensic science and was about to get her PhD. She was qualified by the courts to give expert testimony on forensic matters. So? What does the expert say now? Cataldo challenged herself as she resumed studying her evidence inventory lists, test results, crime-scene photos, notes, and the autopsy report.

  All puzzle pieces.

  She was going to pull it together.

  The scene had refused to give up anything useful. The guys at the Washington State Patrol crime lab offered to lend Kay’s team a hand. They were taking a shot at the partial shoe impressions. The quality was terrible—practically a write-off; she bit her bottom lip, thinking she’d have to get back to them.

  Maybe WSP would find something?

  Cataldo’s small, overworked crew had been going full bore without sleep since the call out to the homicide. They hadn’t had much luck collecting trace, fiber, DNA, anything, for them to go on. They’d dusted and scoped the apartment, town house, everywhere and everything for latents. Nothing. The suspect must’ve worn gloves. Stabbings are intimate crimes where the killer is often cut in the struggle as the weapon becomes blood-slicked and difficult to control.

  Not the case here.

  Absolutely no indication of a struggle, no defense wounds. No indication of sexual assault, or other trauma. The only blood in evidence at the scene was Sister Anne’s type: O positive. These facts alone would suggest either a come-from-behind lay-in-wait attack, or, a sudden full-frontal blitz attack, from someone she knew.

  Go to the weapon.

  The knife tossed among the shrubs in the alley. It had been washed, but while testing failed to yield any useable latents, washing failed to remove the traces of O-positive blood. Sister Anne’s. And the fatal wound was consistent with the knife.

  Cataldo scrutinized the knife then reread the report on the weapon.

  It was a steak knife manufactured by a Swiss company. It had a six-inch blade made of forged stainless steel, containing 20 percent chromium. It was attached to a maple handle secured with three rivets. At the hilt, Cataldo noted a tiny insignia engraved into the blade.

  A stylized maple leaf among the Alps.

  The knife was not among the inventory of the cutlery in the nun’s town house.

  Cataldo’s phone rang with the call she’d been waiting for.

  “Kay, better get down here. I think we’ve got something.”

  “On my way, Gail.”

  Cataldo took a parting glance at the gruesome array of items on the board and dispatched a message to Sister Anne’s killer.

  “We’re gaining on you.”

  Cataldo’s van roared from the support facility at Airport Way South and she made good time before she arrived in the kitchen of the Compassionate Heart of Mercy Shelter. Her partner, Gail Genert, a senior Seattle police criminalist, was standing with two men.

  “This is Sailor and Reggie Longbow. Gentlemen, this is Kay Cataldo, the investigator I told you about. Kay, Sailor and Reggie are in charge of the kitchen.”

  The two men nodded to the stainless-steel counter where the entire inventory of cutlery was spread. There were mismatches, different styles of flatware, plastic handled, wooden handled, all steel types. All sets had been neatly grouped. Genert and Cataldo each had crisp, full-scale photos of the murder weapon and placed them next to a group of steak knives matching the one in the pictures.

  Sailor unfolded his large tattooed arms and placed his hands on the counter. His voice sounded like it was churning in a cement mixer.

  “All of our knives, forks, spoons, and whatnot have been donated over the years. From estates, people moving, hotels, schools, we get all kinds. That knife group is part of an eight-piece set.” Cataldo had bent over to scrutinize the steak knives. The maple leaf/Alps insignia was identical to the one on the murder weapon.

  “Go on,” she told Sailor.

  “Reggie’s in charge of washing up and he noticed we came up short on one, about say what, two-three weeks ago, right, Reg?”

  Longbow, who had a ponytail that nearly reached his waist, nodded.

  Cataldo exchanged a poker glance with Genert, who saw the hint of a smile in her eyes.

  “Do you have any idea how the knife in the set disappeared?”

  Sailor shook his head.

  “Could’ve been accidentally swept into the trash?”

  Cataldo nodded to the big Hobart dishwasher.

  “What about that?”

  “Already checked it for strays. Found a spoon. No knives,” Sailor said.

  “Maybe someone took it?” Cataldo asked. “Any idea who?”

  “We provide three meals a day to about two hundred people a sitting. Some are regulars. Some come once then you never see ‘em again. You do the math.”

  “Gentleman,” Cataldo said, “thank you for helping. We’re not sure what we have here, but it’s critical these details remain confidential. Circulation of this information would constitute obstruction of justice.”

  “Ma’am,” Sailor said, “Reggie here’s a mute and I generally don’t talk to people. Outside of running the show back here, this is the longest conversation I’ve had in months. And I’m going to end it by saying I hope in my clean and sober heart you find Sister Anne’s killer before we do. That woman was a saint.”

  Cataldo hurried outside, reached for her cell phone, and punched Grace Garner’s number. When Grace answered, Cataldo said, “It appears the knife used to kill Sister Anne came from the shelter.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Was he closer to the murderer?

  The line for dinner at the Compassionate Heart of Mercy Shelter began forming after 5:30 P.M. When the doors opened at six for the one-hour evening meal, it had grown to several dozen people.

  Defeated old men in worn, stained clothes, teenagers with pierced faces, young mothers with small children, ex-cons, addicts, and drifters.

  Was Sister Anne’s killer here, among them?

  Jason Wade adjusted his Mariners ball cap, pulled up the collar of his jacket, thrust his hands into his pockets, joined the line, and waited. The smell of hot food wafted from the window.

  He’d missed getting down here for lunch, but was thankful that he was able to ditch Cassie at the paper. It gave him time to chase the story his way, alone, while dodging the messages Cassie had left on his cell, like the latest: “Where are you, Jason? I want to meet up with you, call me.”

  He’d spent the afternoon digging in Sister Anne’s neighborhood. He’d door-knocked in the eastern fringes of Yesler Terrace and Jefferson Terrace and tried to bring Tango’s tip about a possible link to gang payback into play.

  But he got nothing.

  He also burned up minutes on his cell phone working cop sources.

  Again, nothing. And he couldn’t reach Grace.

  All Jason had was Sister Anne’s name, a lead that a knife had been used, and about three hours to deadline for the first print edition. He didn’t have a strong angle to advance the story and his stomach tensed when he spotted a TV news crew down the block going live. Jason envisioned Eldon Reep watching the report in the Mirror newsroom then demanding: “What’s Wade got? Have we heard from Wade?”

  The clock was ticking on him.

  An emergency siren wailing in the distance pulled Jason’s attention back to the line as it began filing into the shelter. It was evident from murmured conversations that most everyone now knew that a nun with the shelter had been murdered.

  “Good to see you.” A white-haired woman wearing a print top, with a silver cross around her neck, greeted each visitor by grasping their hand.

  Jason held hers, leaned closer, then dropped his voice. “Sister, I’m a reporter with the Seattle Mirror and I am terribly sorry about the news.”

  “Thank you.”

  �
��I’d like to spend a moment here to get a sense of the mood. It’s inspiring that you’ve kept the doors open, considering.”

  “God helps us persevere.”

  “Did you know the Sister?”

  Sadness flitted across the woman’s face, and her body language indicated that she’d prefer to see to the other visitors who were flowing around them. Jason moved on, coming next to a table with a jar for donations. He put a folded ten into the slot.

  At the serving table he selected a tray, then a fork, spoon, and knife, letting his thoughts linger on the blade until he found himself looking over a food table at a large man wearing a full-length apron preparing a plate for him.

  “Welcome friend. We have meatloaf, chicken, mashed potatoes, beans, some soup, and salad. How does a bit of everything sound?”

  “A small bit of everything, please. I’ll pass on the soup and salad, thank you.”

  After the chink of serving spoons against Jason’s plate, he scanned the tables of the hall for a seat. Some people had collected into small groups and seemed to know each other, some were smiling, catching up. Others were far off, alone, hunched over their food and eating slowly in quiet desperation.

  Jason took an empty spot between two large groups. To his far left there was a group of men. To his right were several young families with babies. As he ate, he listened to their conversations.

  “I’ve been divorced for two years,” a woman, who had a nose ring and appeared to be in her late teens, told the bald young man across from her. The man sitting next to the woman was holding a baby bundled in a yellow jumper. The man with the baby was wearing jeans and a vest and called to a man at the end of the table, “Yo, Dickie, heard what happened?”

  “What?”

  “One of the nuns here got murdered last night.” The baby-holder took a mouthful of beans and bounced the baby on his knee.

  Dickie had heard. “Cops were in here at breakfast and lunch asking questions.”